By Tiernan Ray

Home renovation Titan Lowe's was showing automation wares under its Iris

The traditional opening night event for press at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the “CES Unveiled” gathering at the Mandalay Bay, a ballroom filled with card tables of select vendors that will be showing their wares on the floor.

This evening's festivities, three hours of free hors d'oevres for press and pitches gy the companies, featured some familiar faces: Parrot, the makers of the remote-controlled drone systems, 3M (MMM) with its touch-sensitive table-top technology.

Medissimo's iMedipac smart pill box

But there were also some relative newcomers who were back with some updated wares. This is the second CES appearance for home remodeling giant Lowe's Companies (LOW), which was showing the home automation kits that it has had on the market for 18 months. The idea is that instead of cobbling together a home security system, with digital locks and switches to turn alarms on and off and such, Lowe's is able to out it all together for you. The company was showing off two new offerings for its Iris brand of kits and companents, devices designed to measure and regulate water flow and turn off valves automatically.

And San Francisco security camera out fit Dropcam was showing off the “Pro” version of its home monitoring Web came, which can give you a surprisingly sharp view into the guest bedroom, using night vision, all from the screen of your iPhone.

In the smarter health category, Medissimo was showing off iMedipac, a pill box that includes a reader for NFC wireless tags. A patient goes to the pharmacy and gets a tray of pills that have NFC tags embedded in them. They then pop the tray into the reader, which can decipher the instructions in the tag for when each day's bill is supposed to be taken. The pill reader can set off a flashing light and sound for each pocket of the pack when it's time to take a pill. But it can also send alerts to the Internet to let a family member know that, say, mom or grandpa have not taken their pill. The company is French, based in Versailles, and has been working on the technology since 2004. It hopes to launch commercially in France in March, having already struck up relationships with more than half the pharmacies nationwide. It is working on the U.S. market, and many other countries.

Home audio folks ClearView Audio were showing off something it calls an “invisible speaker,” branded “Clio,” made from “ultra thin, slightly curved' and optically clear acrylic glass” that “allows it to disperse sound waves in multiple directions.” It certainly looked pretty.

Ultra HD television set makers Seiki of Diamond Bar, California were showing off a solution for the lack of Ultra HD programming: A $40 converter cable that will up-convert plain old, 1080P video sources to be worthy of the higher-resolution TVs. The sets themselves go for about $4,000 for a 65-inch model, or $1,300 for some 50-inch models.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.